


The woods

by usingmynamewasdumb



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Body Horror, Forests, Heavy Angst, M/M, Mild Gore, Mistreatment of Spiders, Plant Gore, Richie Tozier is a Little Shit, Spider-related gore, Trees, but he didn't deserve this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-29
Updated: 2020-11-29
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:00:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27769417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/usingmynamewasdumb/pseuds/usingmynamewasdumb
Summary: Richie convinces Eddie to explore the woods.There is another version of this story on my account that is just fluff and no horror.Edited by Jessica.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak & Richie Tozier





	The woods

“You can’t be serious!”

“What is Eddie spaghetti, you chicken?” He stuck his hands into his armpits and flapped his elbows.

“Shut up, I don’t even want to THINK about what I could be contracting just by standing here.”

They were stood in one corner of the schoolyard where Richie had ‘found’ a section of the fence with a hole near the base. The chain links had been pulled up and bound with a ziptie leaving about a foot of space between the fence and the ground. Richie rolled his eyes.

“Yeah, like what?” He didn’t listen as Eddie’s mouth began to move a mile a minute, he just needed him to be distracted for what he was about to try. He stood beside his friend and reached into the side pouch of his backpack. His hand closed around something cold.

“That’s nice and all Eds, but don’t you need your inhaler?”

“Yes but what does that have to do with-” Richie tossed the inhaler over the fence.

“YOU MOTHERFUCKINGSONOFABITCHASSFUCK!” Eddie raged as Richie got onto his stomach, he inspected the hole and began to shimmy himself under it. “What the hell Richie, this is too far!What are you thinking?” He wondered, not for the first time, how the boy had any air left to breathe. He stood up on the other side and surveyed the trees before turning back to his screaming friend. He sighed and picked up the inhaler.

“Fine, do what you want, but if I die in here alone it’s all your fault.” He pushed the inhaler through the fence.

“That’s horseshit,” Eddie muttered. He inspected the inhaler while he shouldered off his backpack. He put it in a zipped compartment glaring at Richie. He zipped it back up and looked at it for a second. He said something under his breath before going on his tip toes to hang it over the top of the fence. “If you drop it I swear to god Richie.” 

“Yeah, yeah.” Richie smiled and reached to pull the backpack over.

* * *

Eddie woke up with a start, his palms were sweaty and his sheets clung to his skin. He brought a hand to his face and felt a cold wet glob on his cheek. He jerked his hand away and tried to scream but his throat felt clogged. He sat up and heaved into the trash can beside his bed. Clumps of dark came out with each wet cough. His mouth tasted like soil and his lungs felt like they were filled with wet leaves. The panic rose in his chest as he spat out chunk after chunk of dirt, he gagged and convulsed until his trash can was half full and bile was creeping up the back of his throat.

He opened his eyes to nothing but a few spots of spit at the bottom of the trashcan and let the tears that were already pricking the corners of his eyes fall freely. He brought his knees to his chest and leaned back on his headboard. 

* * *

  
  


“See Eddio, not a scratch on ya.” Richie held out a hand for Eddie when he was through the hole. Eddie took it without much hesitation, and it made Richie smile for reasons he didn’t fully understand. 

“Yet, what do you even want to do in here?”

“We’ve lived in Derry forever and have never looked around in the woods behind our school, that’s not a bit weird to you?”

“It’s not weird if there’s an obvious reason.” Eddie took his backpack and slung it back over his shoulders.

“Then why are you here Eddie Spaghetti?”

“You’re an asshole,” He brushed away dirt that wasn’t there. “ I have to be home by 7 so let’s go.”

“Richie threw his arm in the air and begun marching. “ONWARDS AND UPWARDS EDUARDO!”

Eddie dragged his feet behind him.

* * *

Richie held out a hand to him, he looked at it quizzically. 

“There’s no music.” He chose to say instead of _ “I can’t with you” _

There doesn’t need to be,” Richie jerked suddenly and skipped across the forest floor, he twirled and swayed his arms in a way that was just close enough to graceful. He smiled wide and giggled in a way that hit Eddie straight in the chest. He instinctively grabbed the side pouch of his backpack. He realized quickly that he’d moved the inhaler, and that he didn’t really need it. He stood there for a second before rushing to catch up. He breathed deeply as he ran, and for once his asthma was the last thing on his mind.

Richie was ahead of him, slivers of sunlight caught his face through the leaves as he danced around between trees. When Eddie was close enough, Richie reached out once more. Eddie took his hand but moved awkwardly as Richie tried to guide him. 

“You move like your mom, what, do ya got arthritis?” Eddie slapped him with his free hand, but didn’t let go. “Relax” Richie said, softer this time. Eddie tried, and Richie put a hand on his waist and led him to start swaying. 

A branch snapped nearby and Eddie jerked his head in the direction of the sound. Richie followed his gaze with far less urgency. He was concerned more by Eddie’s actions than by the branch.

Eddie pulled away and gripped the straps of his backpack. The energy shifted, and the hairs on his arms stood up.

“Do you see something?” Richie sounded too serious to not be feeling the same thing. Eddie didn’t look at him, he scanned the trees instead, a cloud had covered the sun, and it was darker than he was comfortable with. “Eddie?” Richie’s voice sounded too far away. The tree branches undulated and tangled in each other. The wind hadn’t picked up, but the trees groaned and crackled. 

He screamed as he felt himself be grabbed, he didn’t relax when he saw Richie as panicked as he was, holding onto his shoulders. 

“Is it just me, or are the trees getting a bit handsy?” Eddie looked at him and noticed a tear in his shirt. 

He looked into Richie's eyes instead of at the tree limbs inching towards them. He wasn’t prepared to see Richie’s eyes shift out of their widened position. He cringed as he watched the fear replaced with nothingness. Richie looked through him, his eyes clouded, and the wind rustled his hair. 

“Richie?” Richie let go of him and the trees stilled. 

“Let’s keep going.” He said with no trace of fear. Eddie’s head spun and his legs stepped forward with little input from his brain. He numbly followed his friend through the trees. 

“Where are we going?” He failed at keeping his voice level. Richie answered by crouching at the base of a tree. He stuck his hand into a hole between the roots. Eddie watched as his hand emerged covered in black spots. 

Some of the spiders moved up his arm, while others stayed in the tangled mass in his palm. Eddie’s eyes tracked one up Richie’s neck and below his collar. He gulped but didn’t move as Richie’s hand moved closer to his face. He needed to move, wanted to move, but he didn’t. He felt spiders scurry off of Richie’s hand and onto his face. Richie stroked his cheek before pressing his palm flat against it and dragging the mass down to Eddie’s chin. He took his hand away and rubbed the flattened spiders on his own face, leaving a streak of blackish guts. Richie’s face briefly shifted to look much like how Eddie thought he looked. Richie’s eyes watered.

“Eddie?” he spasmed and rubbed his hand on his shorts. “What’s happening?” Eddie didn’t speak. He saw the shapes move in the corners of his vision, but as the tears filled his eyes, they blurred.

Richie wildly looked around as Eddie stood paralyzed, he saw massed of what looked like snapped branches covered in discolored skin, stretching and barely encasing the jagged pieces of wood, they moved, the lurched, Richie could move his head to watch them, but he couldn’t move, couldn’t grab Eddie, couldn’t run. They twitched and bled brown sludge where crowns of sticks pierced what Richie figured to be their heads.

Eddie noticed Richie sinking into the mud before Richie did. Spindly roots sprung from the ground and slid around his ankles. Richie looked at his feet and then at Eddie. The spider blood on his cheek, only disrupted by where the tears were pouring out of his eyes. 

The roots had gotten high enough to wrap around his thighs, and Eddie watched the creatures come within a few yards of his friend. He saw Richie tense, and try to struggle, but the plants held his arms to his sides now. Strands of the plant plunged into his throat as he tried to scream. 

Eddie could move again, and he lunged forward to tug at the roots choking Richie. Richie’s face was red, and he gargled at Eddie.

“Stop, stop, fucking stop” He pounded his fists against the wood. The creatures had arrived and sunk their limbs into what skin was exposed between the tightening roots. Eddie gasped as he felt his shoes sink into the mud without warning, he screamed and jerked away from his friend. As he ran, he heard leathery slaps follow him. He tripped over a stump he hadn’t seen, and he knew his legs were bleeding, but he didn’t stop. Branches scratched his arms and mud splashed up onto his legs. He felt sick for thinking about getting an infection. 

He shrugged off his backpack when he felt it being tugged at and kept running until his hands gripped the cold metal of a chain link fence. He scrambled to climb it, and the wire at the top dug into his sides through his shirt. He flopped over the top of the fence and hitting the ground knocked the wind out of him. He rolled over, to see a perfectly normal forest through the fence. He rolled onto his back and his body went limp. 


End file.
